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Twin Peaks

'Twin Peaks' Plumbs the Violent Depths of Domesticity

"Part 10" takes us inside multiple homes, from Dougie and Janey-E's marriage to a psychopathic grandson.
Photo: Suzanne Tenner/SHOWTIME

Last week's episode might not have been as wide-ranging as "Part 8," which spun back into the past and out into other realms. But "Part 9" did have what Lucy might call "that open-air sound." There were plane rides, hidden farms, intriguing hints of interplanar journeys, and secret spots in the woods. "Part 10," by contrast, is largely tucked up indoors. It takes place in trailers, in mid-century modern living rooms, and in the tract house with the red door. It deals with domestic arrangements, with families—though families in Twin Peaks come in many forms. Here a family could be a woman and her psychopath grandson or a pair of brothers and their fembot.

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This will not be a favorite episode for people (I am one, and I assume there are others) whose mild irritation with the Dougie storyline stems largely from the fact that we have to hear his ridiculous, infantilizing nickname over and over and over, often in scolding or condescending tones. It's not that I mind Cooper being a weird baby, and it's not even that it makes me reckon with questions about how well any of us know the people we love. It's just that I'm literally sick of hearing the word "Dougie." Unfortunately, as Dougie-Coop and Janey-E rekindle "their" marriage thanks to Cooper's hot abs, we get to hear "Dougie!" repeated ad actual nauseam. On the plus side, theirs is one of the few happy homes this episode, though Janey's newfound infatuation raises the specter of what she'll do when she finds out this isn't her husband.

Unhappier homes include the Mad Men–set living room of the Mitchum brothers, who run the casino where Cooper did his star turn as "Mr. Jackpots." The Mitchums are attended by three nearly identical blondes in pink bustier dresses who go by the names Candie, Mandie, and Sandie. Candie, it seems, is harboring a crush on the Mitchum who isn't Jim Belushi, and is Going Through Some Stuff about it. It's a classic story: Girl loves boy, girl accidentally wallops boy in the face with a remote control, girl's towering guilt forces her to confess her love, boy is unmoved, girl becomes a recalcitrant and perhaps overtly undermining employee. We last saw Candie leaving the casino office with Dougie's work rival and potential future hitman, Anthony Sinclair, suggesting that this domestic unrest may leave the bounds of the home real soon.

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Jane D'Arcy. Photo by Patrick Wymore/Showtime

Even less happy is the trailer home where Steven Burnett is committing two atrocities: menacing his wife Becky, and disturbing Harry Dean Stanton while he's trying to sing a song. (Come on, Steven, the man is a saint.) Steven gestures to their surroundings as a metaphor for Becky's failures. They can't afford their trailer because she won't ask for a raise; it's a mess because she won't clean. But it seems likely that the squalor they live in is a better metaphor for the shitpile Steven is making of both of their lives. We already knew that he has a meth habit and can't get a job. Now, we know that he's also got the potential for violent rage.

But when it comes to violent rage, nobody holds a candle to Ben Horne's grandson, Richard. In an episode focused on domestic machinations, Richard is the homebreaker. He's the one who cracks open doors and walls, who lays the home's treasures bare—or, worse, destroys them. In the episode's opening scene, he charges at a trailer door, puts a knee through the glass, barrels inside, and beats the occupant to death. Later, he storms into his grandmother's immaculate dining room, throttles her until she reveals the safe code, dumps her purse out on the table, and shoves all her valuables inside. In both cases, his victim shout at him from inside her house to stay away, as if the boundary of her home will protect her. In both cases, he reveals this to be a desperate delusion. Through Chad (fuckin' Chad!!), he even manages to breach the sanctity of the sheriff's office, courtesy of a little light mail tampering. For Richard, a home is something to invade.

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Then again, violation just might be in his blood. While attentive viewers have known for a while that the madman who ran down a little boy has the last name Horne, it's now impossible to escape the fact that this isn't some far-flung Horne cousin. This is almost certainly Audrey's son. (Could be Johnny's son, but you've seen Johnny. He's at a low ebb at the moment, tied to a chair, wearing mitts and a helmet, and gazing at a hypnotically chanting Teddy Ruxpin hamster ball. But he's always been cognitively delayed. Or, as Audrey delicately put it, "He's got emotional problems. Runs in the family.") We know almost nothing about Audrey's life after the events of the Twin Peaks finale. At the time, it seemed like the last episode might have ended with her dead. But we now know that she was in a coma, and that Doc Hayward saw the man he thought was Cooper sneaking out of intensive care. The implications are disturbing. Is Richard just the product of all the Horne "emotional problems" genes bubbling up, or is he the child of an evil spirit incarnate who raped an unconscious girl? Talk about a broken home.

Notes for Peaks freaks of old:

— "Run Silent, Run Drape" is both a Bob's Burgers–worthy store name pun and a beautiful fairy tale ending for Nadine.

— At first I thought the chord progression in the final song, sung by Rebekah Del Rio in a performance that I'm assured is enchanting even though it does nothing for me, was the same as "Just You and I." (This may well have been why the song did nothing for me, actually. "Just You and I" makes me run screaming.) But it's not in the same key, and while I was listening to them both, I realized that it also put me in mind of the song that plays when Ben and Jerry's babysitter is dancing on the hook rug. Does David Lynch just love arpeggios?

— I assume we're supposed to be drawing connections between Steven and Leo; his rant specifically calls to mind the "this is where we LIVE, Shelly!" scene in Fire Walk with Me. Though at the moment Steven wants credit for the fact that, unlike Leo, he never forces Becky to clean.

— I had to do some of my Peaks Classic analysis in the main body of the recap this week, but here's a line I cut out above but saved just for you: "'But,' you're saying, 'surely John Justice Wheeler could never have fathered such a monster!'"

— Bet he could, though. I never trusted that guy.

Follow Jess Zimmerman on Twitter.